Character Death (Rules)

Sanctuary is not a perma-death shard, however, due to the nature of political based role-play conflict, there needs to be a way to remove a character from the role-play stage. Consequently, we support extended ghost times for role-play death, which differs dramatically from a basic game mech death.

Game Mech Death

Any death that happens when not in a role-play situation such as hunting. This is considered a normal UO death and is resolved by normal UO mechanics. Fictionally, a character's soul, but not his spirit, is knocked out of his physical body until such time as a player or healer can return it.

Role-Play Death

Any death which is caused by another player during an intentional role-play scene. All scenes must involve at least 30 minutes of role-play at the time of the death, or 24 hour role-play notice of an intended assassination.

PvP Needs a Reason

We assume that those playing on our shard expect that another player has a good role-play reason for wanting to start a PvP fight. We assume those reasons have to do with the shard storyline and have depth to them. That that said here are some of the expectations for PvP.

Where you can fight

These rules would assume that standard UO PvP mechanics are on for the mainland, i.e. attacking causes criminal flag unless in a guild at war. But only consensual dueling is active on Summer Isle and Underhill using the "I wish to duel" system built into Serv UO.

You have a real reasons to fight.

"My character is a bad guy." isn't good enough reason. We expect to see real role-play depth and valid triggers that are more rare then they are common. If your character's blood lust is triggered by the wind blowing we assume that they are not stable enough to be of any use to the god or gods that wanted to bring them here.

Right to back down, apologize or walk away.

We require characters to have enough self-control to allow the other character to back down, apologize or walk away.

Sneak Attack

We allow for the fact that a character, by its design, might back down from a fight they did NOT start only to look for a more opportune setting to even the score. You have 30 mins, after backing down from a fight to attack the other party one-on-one. You can not bring a friend to help you. You can not use another one of your characters. You can not ask someone else to attack them for you.

One on One

We assume that the fight is between two people unless their guilds are already at war. Given that limitation, it is acceptable for another person to stand to defend you, but then you can not participate. This restriction does not apply to guilds who are at war with each other.

Why is near Perma-Death Needed

Most of us have experienced role-play storylines between two characters that never resolve because characters can not die and there is no real consequence to death. This is especially true on shards that have limited PvP looting or stealing. Often, the reward or punishment of just winning or loosing a PvP battle is enough and the story progresses.

Eventually, however, someone tries to up the ante in some way that is intended to be further unpleasant and may border on IC/OOC grieving or harassing. When this happens in a community, players try to implement more reasonable solutions such as requiring extended heal times for the recovering looser.

With this in mind we are going to implement a death curse which can be activated once conflict has escalated between two parties.